Source: Bloomberg As Ukraine’s church moves toward independence, the Russian president could lose his role of defender of the faith. By Leonid Bershidsky The Eastern Orthodox Church is closer than ever to a schism that would cast Russian President Vladimir Putin in a role similar to that of King Henry VIII when he split the Church of England from Rome in the 16th century. Russia’s ambition to be the center of the Orthodox world threatens to end in isolation. But holding back from splitting the church will mean humiliation by the Ukrainians, who have been ruthlessly terrorized by the Russian leader. On…
Browsing: Ukraine
Source: Pravda The agreements of 300 years have been cast aside. Constantinople wants to break the spine of Orthodoxy and make Ukraine hostile to Russia forever. However, it is up to common people – Ukrainian Christians – to make their final decision. On October 11, the Synod of the Constantinople Patriarchate made the following decisions (briefly): 1. To confirm the decision that the Ecumenical Patriarchate proceeds to provide autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine. 2. To restore the stauropegion of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Kiev. 3. To accept and consider the appeals from Filaret Denisenko and Macary Maletich for the…
Source: The Washingon Post By David Stern and Amie Ferris-Rotman KIEV, Ukraine — For centuries, the golden cupolas of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery and catacombs have been a refuge of tranquility and prayer in Orthodox Christianity. It is now caught in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as it spills into the world of faith. What is at stake is whether the Ukrainian church can formally break away from Russia’s control and become a new autonomous branch among Orthodoxy’s more than a dozen churches. But it also reflects the wider battlegrounds of nationalism and political identity that helped touch off a separatist uprising…
Source: ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE PERMANENT DELEGATION TO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES The Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the WCC, Archbishop Job of Telmessos, gave the following interview to Marina Ziosiou of the Greek newspaper “Ethnos of Sunday” about the ecclesiastical issue of autocephaly of Ukraine: The hierarch points out that the Patriarchate of Moscow rejects any dialogue and states that it is strange that Orthodox Ukrainians do not want to be under the jurisdiction of Kiev. Archbishop Job of Telmessos, Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches gives his own point of view on the…
Source: The New York Times By Neil MacFarquhar MOSCOW — Vyacheslav Gorshkov, who teaches the catechism at a Kiev cathedral, was among the majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine who had reconciled themselves to the fact that their church answers to the Russian Orthodox patriarch in Moscow. No longer. Mr. Gorshkov does not want to break with the faith, but does want to split with the Russian Orthodox Church, incensed by what he sees as the Kremlin using the church as an instrument of its old imperial control. He is among the majority of the faithful hoping that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew…
Source: Sputnik News MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia urged the primates of all the Local Orthodox Churches to launch a general discussion of the issue with the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Nikolai Balashov, the deputy chair of the Moscow Patriarchate’s External Church Relations Department, told Sputnik on Tuesday. “The letters outlined the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on the issue of the so-called Ukrainian autocephaly and the possible negative consequences of the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople for the unity of the ecumenical Orthodoxy. They also included the proposal to undertake efforts to initiate the discussion of the current situation among all the…
Source: The Tablet According to the transcript Patriarch Bartholomew defended his plan to grant autocephaly to a new Ukrainian Orthodox church A Greek Orthodox news agency has published the transcript of a three-hour summit between the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, and Patriarch Kirill of Russia over the future of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, showing that the Russian delegation angrily rejected Ukrainian self-rule and insisted the country’s current government was illegitimate. According to the transcript, published on 1 October by Orthodosia, Patriarch Bartholomew defended his plan to grant autocephaly, or independence, to a new Ukrainian Orthodox church during the 31 August…
Source: Orthodoxia ORTHODOXIA.INFO | Andreas Loudaros In an exclusive, orthodoxia.info reveals Constantinople and Moscow’s respective arguments and the points of conflict between the two Churches vis-à-vis the Ukraine issue, publishing part of the heated debate which took place between Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Patriarch Kirill during their meeting at the Phanar last August. For three hours the two Primates discussed the issues currently separating their Churches, from the Ukraine question and the Russian Church’s absence from the Holy and Great Synod in Crete, to Moscow’s position on inter-Christian dialogue. As revealed from the talks, the Ecumenical Patriarchate believes Ukraine does…
Source: Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America At its formal session on April 20, 2018, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople voted to proceed with taking the necessary steps for granting autocephaly to the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine. This decision was made after extensive study and discussion based on the responsibilities and rights of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as enumerated by the sacred canons, and the historical reality that in 1589 when the Church of Russia received its status as a patriarchate from the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Metropolis of Kiev, the…
Source: Catholic Herald Tensions over Ukraine threaten to tear apart the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians For centuries, the archbishops of Constantinople could credibly claim to be the “Ecumenical Patriarch”. Their see was the “New Rome”, centre of the oikoumenē, the “inhabited world”. Today, their successor, Patriarch Bartholomew, looks beleaguered. The guards around his residence in the Phanar quarter of Istanbul reveal his threatened position in an increasingly Islamified Turkey. But now he seems poised to gain other powerful enemies, this time within the Orthodox Church itself, by unilaterally recognising a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of Moscow. The renascent Church…
Source: Hurriyet Daily News WASHINGTON The United States said in a statement on Sept. 25 that it supports Fener Greek OrthodoxPatriarch Dimitri Bartholomew’s stance on granting independence to the Ukrainian Church. U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement that the U.S. supports the freedom of groups “to govern their religion according to their beliefs and practice their faiths freely without government interference.” “The United States respects the ability of Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders and followers to pursue autocephaly according to their beliefs. We respect the Ecumenical Patriarch [Dimitri Bartholomew] as a voice of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue,” she added. Nauert reiterated her country’s “unwavering…
Source: Public Orthodoxy by George Demacopoulos The three-way dispute between Ukrainians, Russians, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the possibility of Ukrainian ecclesiastical independence is shaping up to be the greatest challenge to Orthodox Christian unity of our generation. From a purely political perspective, Ukrainian autocephaly would represent an unmitigated disaster for the Russian Orthodox Church. Not only would it deprive the Russian Church of one third of its parishes and undermine its Russkiy Mir project, but it would dramatically belie the claim of the Moscow Patriarchate that it is the leader of the Orthodox Christian world. In a desperate effort to thwart the…